Charge Rifle vs Havoc and Select Fire

@Anonymouswhat i don't get is why they removed skullpiercer especially because longbow is OP with it, and then create a charge rifle with a significantly larger map, tall buildings and whatnot.

But longbow require a good aim and prediction on the bullet drop meanwhile you can shoot someone across the map with charge rifle without a single drop and easy tracking.

Respawn is clueless about this gun. I'm sure they gonna nerf it anytime soon, but it shouldn't exist in the first place.

I think it would be reasonable to replace the L-star with the charge rifle in care packages. Not only is the charge rifle 10 times more effective at long range than any other normal long-range weapon, but the L-star is way to restrictive for care packages.

I kind of get why they wanted the L-star to be a care-package weapon as they have now 1 shotgun (mastiff), 1 sniper (kraber) and 1 medium range (L-star), which is kind of balanced.

However, I find the L-star to be the absolute worst gun with its pretty limited ammo and slow bullet travel (and ridiculous muzzle flash).

Instead, place the Charge rifle with limited ammo in a care package. People will definitely pick that one up. L-star can be placed in the normal loot pool.

As most other Apex weapons, Charge Rifle existed before Apex, in Titanfall games, where it was mainly an anti-titan energy weapon, but often used in the Coliseum 1v1 no-titan game mode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoNhTCyTZkY . Havoc was introduced only in Apex, so I'm guessing it may be Havoc's beam mode that was inspired by the Charge Rifle and after that toned down so that the weapon wouldn't become too oppressive at long range. Beam mode didn't prove its worth, so Respawn introduced a true hitscan weapon which is way more fun and efficient at long range, but without the power of the Havoc at close to medium ranges.

However, now that we have the CR, Havoc's beam mode should be changed with something else (maybe launch a gravity grenade or something like that). At the moment, the select fire hopup is good on a Havoc only because it doesn't take a backpack slot to carry it for when you find a Prowler.

Charge Rifle is good on this large map for crowd control. Stop people from pushing, force them to go outside the ring, thin out teams by eliminated respawned enemies as they drop. It can be loads of fun if used right and increases the chances of surviving and winning as a duo or even solo. Players complain about it a lot because most of them still haven't learned their lesson. I keep seeing enemies peeking again and again or running straight, without  jumping or even with their back at me after I hit them hard with the CR. But even so, I only get to finish few of them as they're usually too far to push.  

I don't agree with CR becoming a care package weapon, because the best way to counter it at long distances is by using it as well. If only 1-2 would drop in the first rounds, the team that picks one up would get too advantaged, very difficult to counter or push against in the open. If it would drop only in late stages, the distance would be too small for the CR to be efficient (especially with the 4x-10x scope) and therefore worse than the dreadful L-Star. 

@Anonymous  Because they wanted to make a sniper rifle. You can't just add a sniper rifle as alternative fire mode to an AR - that would be way too universal (or the stats would just have to be bad (and hence 1 or the other mode would be practically unusable anyway)).

Havoc alt fire is NOT a sniper rifle. It's damage dropoff starts very early, so it's intended use range is <200m - not a sniper.

And it's never used even in it's intended range, because the stats on it are just terribly bad (I guess they wanted to be overly conservative testing the new mechanic).

@DYSPROssium Comparing L-star to CR is like comparing Mastiff to Spitfire... CR is most definitely not a package-level weapon (it would need a significant bump up in stats to become one), while L-star is (although after playing a bit more with it, I feel like they could revert the damage nerf - it was ridiculously high dps before the patch, but the overheating mechanic kind of overcomes it a bit; however, even with the nerf, it still is the highest dps weapon in the game (devotion at max fire rate has slightly more, but even with turbocharger it takes time to reach it, L-star goes full force from first bullet)).

Also L-star bullets are not slow (I was recently playing around with bullet travel time for 300m and 750m for various wapons in the training) - they're only slow if you compare them to other energy weapons (super fast), but comparable to heavy AR's. I don't have the data on me atm, but I think it was similar to longbow and definitely significantly faster than wingman (well wingman bullets are REALLY slow 🙂).

@DoYaSeeMe 

"I don't agree with CR becoming a care package weapon, because the best way to counter it at long distances is by using it as well. If only 1-2 would drop in the first rounds, the team that picks one up would get too advantaged, very difficult to counter or push against in the open."

This is exactly the problem, if you encounter someone with a charge rifle, the only chance to counter is to have it as well. No other weapon is as easy to use and does so much damage as the CR. It is fundamentally better than the other long range weapons.

The disadvantage you name is already existing in the game. You must run a CR to be competitive to another CR which is just bad weapon balancing. If you don't find one than you have a true problem. Placing them into a care package means that players need to fight over the loot to get a chance on good weapons (mastiff, kraber) so it is more balanced to place CR in a package instead of being lucky to find one.

Also keep in mind that making CR a car package weapon means that it only has limited ammo. Players then need to think about spending it properly instead of just shooting infinitely now with just 1 stack of ammo. It would make the weapon less spammy and easier to counter than it is now.

@Biochemikas 

"CR is most definitely not a package-level weapon (it would need a significant bump up in stats to become one)"

The addition of the CR made the triple take, longbow, havoc single fire (and the G7 scout at long range) almost useless. If you would look at the meta it is completely dominated by CR when players have the choice. The longer reload doesn't balance the weapon as reloading at longer range isn't directly a problem as it would be at close range.

"Comparing L-star to CR is like comparing Mastiff to Spitfire... "

I wanted to suggest putting the CR into the care package by replacing it with another one. I choice the L-star because it is the least pickup one of the current 3.

"Also L-star bullets are not slow"

In fact they are! They have the slowest bullet travel time to make up for the higher dps. It says so here on the apex site.

The reasons I don't like to sport the L-star is the absurd muzzle flash and the limited ammo that is given for a medium range weapon. 

"but I think it was similar to longbow and definitely significantly faster than wingman (well wingman bullets are REALLY slow"

The bullet travel time of all the heavy ammo weapons and light ammo weapons are exactly the same. The only exception are the energy ammo weapons, which have faster bullets making it easier to hit shots further away. There is thus no difference in travel speed between the wingman and the long now 🙌

With the L-star you gotta shoot in the direction your target is running, as the travel time is slower and you hit every shot behind the target. 

EDIT: Removed the bullet speed part, I was confused with the slowness effect of bullets. See my reply below instead.

@DYSPROssiumI have no idea what those numbers for speed mean, but from my tests they have almost absolutely no correlation with reality ingame (e.g., mastiff bullets are actually faster than wingman).
That may be initial bullet velocity (in some imaginary units), or some coefficient, but apparently that's not the only number determining bullet travel ingame, e.g., the may be very significant velocity drop over distance and that varies greatly between weapons.

"There is no difference between Wingman and Longbow"
Good joke. XD
Have you ever USED the weapons? You can write a poem in your head before a mid-long range wingman shot reaches it's destination. Even R99 bullets are significantly faster.

(At 750m, after shooting wingman, I switched to Kraber, ADS'ed and still had to wait a while before I saw the bullet hit... - maybe the poem would be just a few lines, but could certainly do it)

Anyway, numbers on paper really don't matter (unless you have ALL the relevant numbers (actual initial velocity and velocity drop curve)), what matters is what actually happens in game. And I can assure you, L-STAR bullets are in no way slow. Go test it yourself.
Also L-stars bullets are enormous, so you really wouldn't need to lead your targets at close range, even if the bullets were as slow as you think them to be.

The muzzle flash was a huge problem for L-star when it had no sight, now it doesn't feel any different from havoc or devotion (which are flashy, but definitely usable).

P.S. Muzzle flash IS a generally big problem in Apex altogether, but that's a completely different topic.

The only reason why I (and probably most of everyone else) usually avoid the L-star and/or fail with it is that I'm too trigger happy and I consistently overheat it (I just can't force myself to stop at 8-10 shots, even if all I need to do is let go of LMB for a millisecond...). But that's really my problem, not the weapon's. L-star is a heavily underestimated monster weapon.

If you think that finding L-star in package is a disappointment, then now honestly try to imagine how you would feel finding a CR (in it's current state, not buffed) in it... Most ppl don't even pick it up as world spawn, so you can't actually honestly think it would be fine in a care package...

@DYSPROssiumWell, I haven't seen much fighting around care packages since Season 3 started, maybe because there are also the loot train, drones and vaults that drive the focus away and the map is larger than KC and with a lot of loot bins all over which makes travelling to a care package unworthy.

Also, you can hear the CRs from a mile away, while the beam easily gives away the shooter's location. This gives your team enough time to prepare, whether is looting for other weapons, fleeing, sneaking, pushing, camping, waiting, etc..

CR may be a scary weapon, but it's really not that deadly. I like the weapon and pick it very often, but this season I had more kills done with the Longbow and the double tapped G7 and worked more efficiently in the first round with the basic Triple Take than with the unkitted CR.

@Biochemikas I avoid the L-Star because I usually don't like plasma guns. They're like pew-pew-ing cotton pieces and don't give me a feeling of power.

Hello @Biochemikas !

You're right, I made the mistake of mixing up some information of the slow-down effect of ammo types with the actual projectile speed. 😞 

So lets correct that.

I found the Reddit thread I was pulling my info from. Especially from the developer comments made there. I will put them down as bullet points:

1. Energy ammo weapons have the faster projectile speed and lowest bullet drop in any category of weapons.
2. The shotguns have the lowest projectile speed.
3. No attachment (other than havoc single fire) affects bullet travel speed.

So after some digging online, I found all the stats from the weapons. I created a graph below which shows the bullet travel speed of the different weapons. I coloured the different ammo types in their colours. Also, note that there is no mention anywhere that the velocity of bullets drops over distance. The actual bullet drops, but not the velocity.

Some observations

• The L-star has definitely one of the slowest velocities in the game as it sits right there between the shotguns.
• As you correctly said, the wingman shots travel way more slowly than the longbow one! Maybe I should indeed start writing poems instead.
• Shotgun projectile speeds are very low.
• I wasn't expected such a big difference between the prowler and flatline or hemlok.
• Energy ammo weapons have the highest projectile speed for sure.
• Snipers have in general a higher bullet

Of course, bullet velocity doesn't say everything, but it definitely interesting to compare the weapons!

And again, those numbers don't correspond to reality, unless that's some terminal minimum velocity or sth. A 310m LSTAR hit takes ~0.6-0.7 sec (my measurements weren't very precise), so 440 m/s at minimum. If we assume there's velocity drop over distance, the initial velocity has to be even higher.

Flatline's 310m time is somewhere between 0.7-0.75 sec, so it's actually slower than LSTAR over this distance, yet you would think it had to be 2x faster...

I couldn't test any shorter distance, because I didn't want to bother with replays and slow-motion time measurement, but I would assume heavy weapons actually have higher initial velocity, but extremely high deceleration, while energy weapons have very little (or none at all) deceleration. So I guess it is possible that at 50m, L-STAR would indeed be much slower, but honestly 0.05 or 0.1 sec really doesn't make that much difference - you still lead less than 1 body width (1m in Apex is actually very short - ~1 body width; at 7.5m/s move speed, you would need to lead 0.7m with 0.1 sec travel time = less than 1 body width)...

So again, don't trust datamined numbers if you don't know what they stand for. And most definitely don't make gameplay assumptions on them.

P.S. Wingman 310m shot = 1-1.1 sec, and 750m - full 3 seconds... (longbow ~2,2s, TT - ~1,1s; L-STAR somewhere between 1.5-1.8s (I didn't have the patience to get more hits on the 750m target to get more accurate measurements)).

P.P.S. I looked at that thread and if travel time actually varies between shots on the same weapon... Well that would explain a lot of hit inconsistencies at long range... I don't get how that could be a thing though. Some extreme rounding errors in calculations?